OK - having uninstalled WebRoot SpySweeper because of issues it was causing my system has been running great (much faster and with not obvious problems in logs etc).

I thought - "I know ... my unused Outpost Family license has a few months still to run." I haven't used it since version 4 was released and caused havoc on my system but I figured that by now they must have ironed out the issues and it does supply at least some realtime spyware protection.

Sure enough - installed it - and immediately started suffering random sudden reboots (no warning blanks screens and restarts - seemed particularly bad when I was browsing with Firefox - but I don't know if it was related).

You know... to a degree I think we're suffering from the cure being worse than (or at least as bad as) the disease. With all of our paranoia surrounding online security, we're driven to install heavy, complex apps to shield us from the threats that await us online. All of these "solutions" seem to create problems these days as the vendors find themselves competing with more and more offerings and rush to give their apps that "gee whiz, neato" factor (doesn't help that as consumers we fuel this by being distracted by bells and whistles AND by seeking all-in-one solutions to our problems).

Knock on wood (Darwin gives his head a good thumping), my system running behind a hardware firewall and running SpySweeper with A/V seems to be the sweet spot (though I must confess that this setup consumes more resources than did AVG Pro and SpySweeper w/o A/V). Pretty content, overall.

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

You not having any issues with the latest builds of SpySweeper? The version I unistalled seemed to cause registry permission problems when installing software and if I wanted to change file associations etc. It had some locked registry entries that meant MSCONFIG wouldn't allow its resident scanner to be disabled at startup too.

Haha, Carol, you and Outpost are not really the best friends. May I suggest you to install Outpost 5 Beta or even better, Outpost Suite!

Frankly, Outpost should be ruled out of any security lineup consideration. The guys developing it totally lost it time ago, and it's not worth this cost for a premium security (if there's any). Makes you wonder if they use the software in their computers at home... Time to search for a good alternative. Ken found one but I can recall which one...

Hi carol! I haven't tryed PCTools, but I can share my experience with firewalls and antiviruses.

Like ken, I've been looking for a antivirus/firewall solution (see Seeking opinions about combination antivirus/firewall products) and after trying Outpost, Kaspersky and others, I've decided to come back to my beloved NOD32 and, finally... Comodo. I dismissed it at first, but Comodo is okay, and certainly has a good reputation for outbound filtering and leaking prevention. One problem I had (and still have — but it’s now under control) with Comodo is with the "dll injections" monitoring. This has caused my CPU to go a bit crazy... so I've disabled the feature for now. Seems like an ok compromise because NOD32 already does great job at detecting suspicious activity.

One other small annoyance happens when I update software (usually FARR, these days... ). It will NOT register and remember the permission i give to specific child applications. The cure is only to shut down the applications that were affected by the updated parent (farr…) application (updating farr will affect all the permissions for the applications it opens). I don't know if I'm expressing myself properly -- English is hard tonight, don't know why...

All in all, it's probably the best firewall I've had... Especially that it's free!

Thanks - I haven't tried Comodo - last time I was looking for a firewall I installed and uninstalled so many I screwed up my system. In the end I gave up looking and settled for Windows XP built in firewall. I am also behind a router firewall so I feel reasonably 'hidden' from view.

If I can summon up the courage I might have a look at Comodo.

I already use NOD32 - and yes I think that is really good. I am a bit surprised though that ESET seem to have given up on updates for NOD32 - there hasn't been one for many months (apart from pattern files). Presumably they are working to hard on the unwanted mega suite they seem to be planning!

I had a hard time uninstalling Comodo, i don't really know how good it is or otherwise, it does well on the tests apparently, but it was far too 'noisy' for me, but it left so much stuff behind in registry that I couldn't get windows to accept that it had gone and Kaspersky was there (I went for the suite, just laziness mainly lol).